


and goes, the scratching in her ribs

by randomfatechidna



Series: all your faves have anxiety [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Mentions of Anxiety, Mentions of PTSD, Surreal, wanda and vision look after each other and that's. just. tea.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 16:34:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11513220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomfatechidna/pseuds/randomfatechidna
Summary: the lights in the sky far outnumber the lights below her, but they seem enough to bring a balance between them. she feels free here, caught between the distant stabs of colour. she feels like, if she breathed all the air from her body, perhaps she'd float away.





	and goes, the scratching in her ribs

**Author's Note:**

> this is a very self indulgent, three am fic which has undergone many revisions since it was originally written last year. it's very much my baby, very close to my heart. 
> 
> set after everything, assuming vision survives thanos

there are times she wakes, fear running in drops of tears and sweat, and she feels so trapped it hurts to breathe. there is a collar around her neck, there is hydra breathing in her ear, there are governments and families that want her to burn for her mistakes. sometimes, quietly, in the darkest of the small hours, there is her brother, bleeding out in front of her. but she has not told anyone that. some fears are so visceral they are only meant for the one they are intended. 

anyway, she wakes up, but it isn't the dream that wakes her. the dream is her capture: she cannot control herself, she is lost in her own body, in the redness that winds itself around her fingers. she is trapped. her body would make her suffer the dream to the end, if she had not been woken up. 

she is shaking. she cannot form the words. a few slip out; they are not english and she is too tired to translate, too caught in the last dregs of the dream. she is still in between dreaming and waking, so when a voice responds to her in the tongue she was born into, his name escapes her. he is alive. she blinks. 

the vision is not her brother. 

she gathers the right words in her head, takes a moment to translate them. "please," she says, her voice rasping. has she been screaming? "i need to go."

he takes her and lifts her out of bed like a bride, although she feels empty enough to be a widow. she wraps her arms around him, tucking herself into his neck, breathing him in, forgetting her pain in his coolness. the air is cold, too - gooseflesh rises on her skin. how she would like to not feel anything. just once. 

the rooftop brings her a kind of peace. he sets her down on the gravelled ground, but she clings to him, a hand on his chest, and an arm around the expanse of his back. her heart rate slows. the lights in the sky far outnumber the lights below her, but they seem enough to bring a balance between them. she feels free here, caught between the distant stabs of colour. she feels like, if she breathed all the air from her body, perhaps she'd float away. 

a hunk of gravel bites into her ankle. she tries to dislodge it, but the vision just pulls her up onto his lap, pulls her side flush against his chest. does he see the same stars as she does, or does he only see the ones in the sky? she tears her eyes away from the lights to look at the ones in his eyes. how he looks at her: she wishes she could be the woman he needs, not one who wakes shivering with a desire to see the stars, not one with a crippling fear of being trapped. 

she kisses him, to prove to herself that she can, and she leans her forehead on his. "i love you," she whispers, because the night is too quiet, and she only wants him to hear. he is her escape. 

it comes and goes, the scratching in her ribs, the desire to tear her hair out. the need to escape. her fingers dig into him until the moment passes, until the need to run works its way out of her. he tells her he loves her, too, over and over again, in between caresses and kissing the apples of her cheeks and after, she smiles with her teeth. she could never escape this, the place she was meant for. 

there are parties, certain tabloids and news outlets and groups, that have made it very clear that they blame her for everything. she remembers being fragile to that once, early after everything, after pietro, after bucky. now she doesn't concern herself with any of it. they can hate her: hate her choices and her mistakes and who she chooses to love, but they will never hate her as much as she hates herself, so she is content in her victory. 

the vision will sometimes give her a digest of who is talking about her, when interests peak around the anniversaries of her mistakes, so she won't leave the building for a few days. even though she can protect herself, even though she has more control over her power than she ever has, she likes to give the public some breathing room from her face and the horrors it has seen. maybe one day she'll be able to walk to the markets without someone pointing at her. it's almost like being in sokovia again, but she is not poor, and she buys her food just like everybody else. it doesn't stop them pointing. soon, she thinks, she will learn to point back. 

she is dozing; the vision's shoulder is oddly warm beneath her cheek. he doesn't need to breathe, but his shoulders rise and fall beneath her, anyway. she feels like she is floating at sea, now: the stars, like they will always be, sitting righteously above her in the sky, and the sea reflecting billions of years worth of light into her face. she has stumped herself, here. is vision the stars or is he the sea? or, she thinks, teasing out the metaphor as far as it will go, is he the boat she sails on? she is dozing. none of this matters.

he takes her and pulls her in closer to him, heaving her up into his arms and floating them back through their window, back into their room. she is too old for this, she thinks absently. her joints crack as he sets her back into her blankets. he rounds the bed to get in on his side, and she stirs with his absence, feels the coolness of where he used to be, but then he scoops her back into his chest, and all of her breath escapes her. 

she settles in. calm. he has plucked the thorns off of her ribs. she can take a full breath now without choking. "i love you," he whispers, the billionth time that night. 

the stars wink down at her, the moon shines on the glass of their window. she is already asleep.


End file.
